Can Chicago — and by extension other cities and towns throughout the U.S. — ban guns?

That’s the question the U.S. Supreme Court will now have to answer after hearing oral arguments a week ago in McDonald v. Chicago, a case where the National Rifle Association and 76-year-old Otis McDonald, who says he fears for his safety without a gun, are challenging the constitutionality of Chicago’s ban on handguns.

The answer might at first seem clear. Indeed, the Constitution’s Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Thanks to this amendment, handgun ownership is now at an all-time high. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated in 1999 that there were 215 million privately-owned firearms in the United States. The National Academy of Sciences placed the number at 258 million in 2005, and it’s likely approaching 300 million given the skyrocketing sales following the election of President Barack Obama.

Whether you think the United States having as many guns as it does people is a good or a bad thing is your prerogative, but possession is clearly protected by the Second Amendment.

However, getting back to the Chicago case, things aren’t so simple. The catch is that most of the Bill of Rights really applies only to the three branches of the country’s national government: Congress, the president and the courts.

Given that the Illinois state government legislated the Chicago gun ban, the justices will therefore have to consider another amendment: the 14th. The applicable part of this particular amendment states that, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

This suggests that many of the rights included in the Bill of Rights, though only applicable to Congress in the text, are incorporated into the 14th Amendment and therefore also apply to the states.

For much of history, the right to bear arms has been consistently perceived by the Supreme Court and lower courts as a right that, given the Second Amendment’s focus on the gun ownership for the upkeep of militias, does not necessarily apply to all states. This contention was fully refuted, however, when the Supreme Court struck down D.C.’s handgun ban in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, ruling that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to own weapons, such as handguns, for self-defense.

Not surprisingly, the court, which can be counted on to always answer the simplest questions it can when presented with hot-button issues, did not suggest whether or not the right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense should or should not be incorporated into the 14th and applied to all states.

This case forces them to make that decision — and it’s about time.

Apart from the specific gun issue, it’s time the court clearly states once and for all that each and every part of the Bill of Rights applies to all American citizens. Just as the rights were enacted to apply to all Americans no matter which of the 13 colonies they called home in 1791, they should apply to all Americans today, no matter in which of the 50 states they reside.

Now, this doesn’t mean I support the court’s current reading of the Second Amendment. In fact, I think they got it wrong in D.C. v. Heller. As I see it, the framers’ sole purpose for the Second Amendment was to ensure that, at a time when the United States did not have a standing army, bearing arms was necessary to protect the new nation from a foreign invader or internal rebellion.

As such, my opinion is that the right to bear arms today — and by arms I mean handguns, not hunting rifles — needs some limits. And as the underlying issue in this case shows, what limits are necessary should be decided not on the state level, but by Congress. Because whether its contents need to be changed or not, the Bill of Rights was made to protect us all — and I’m guessing old Otis McDonald agrees.

Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Md.